Google investing up to $40B in Anthropic (opens in new tab)

(wsj.com)

46 pointschang116d ago24 comments

24 comments

Does this mean Google is a proscribed terrorist organisation or whatever the legal designation is and can no longer work with the US government?

layer816d ago

No. Google can’t make use of Anthropic within the scope of their own government contracts. That doesn’t mean they can’t invest in Anthropic otherwise.

tomrod16d ago

Does the EO actually hold any weight to that designation, or is that decided by the US Congress?

infecto16d ago

Was there ever anything more than a tweet from the secretary of defense? That holds no weight.

layer816d ago

Yes, they’ve been formally designated: https://www.anthropic.com/news/where-stand-department-war

infecto16d ago

Ahh yes I forgot on that. Still seemed like not much of any impact, blowing smoke.

spindump893016d ago

Hopefully this money means more compute infrastructure to help Anthropic counter the efficiency changes that have created this perceived downtrend in claude quality.

palmotea16d ago

The puzzling thing is why Google would try to help with that. Aren't they competitors? Wouldn't they want their competitor to have problems?

It's more understanding for Amazon or Microsoft to make such an investment, because they're not as competitive in the model space.

bmurphy197616d ago

There's always three:

   Google buys Anthropic.
   Microsoft buys Open AI (or vice versa depending on how things go).
   SpaceGrok buys Cursor, limps along in 3rd place.
   Meta is the last man standing, get's stuck with Oracle, dies.

And then hopefully some open source models save us from this nightmare before China commadatises everything.

Edit: I forgot Amazon. Who knows what they will do. They're the wildcard anyway.

_puk16d ago

OpenAI buying Microsoft.. I honestly think I'd like to see that.

Anything to invigorate the desktop.

Microsoft buying OpenAI.. 10 minutes later it's rebranded Copilot.. and.. nothing much changes in the world. Oh, except all the AI improvements are around Enterprise governance.

TranquilMarmot15d ago

I hate how plausible this is

mchusma16d ago

Google owned 14ish percent of Anthropic before this investment, so presumably this could bring it up to as much as 25%?

michelb16d ago

Deepmind is heavily using Claude. This could help secure computing power.

tomrod16d ago

I'm not up to date, I think. How so?

1 more reply

morelikeborelax16d ago

What if Google can't compete? They don't want to be left behind and all this money being throw around is just nonsense anyway.

infecto16d ago

Google was already an investor in Anthropic but I don’t think they are truly competitors in this space.

littlestymaar16d ago

> the efficiency changes that have created this perceived downtrend in claude quality”

Why the euphemism? What Anthropic did was an aggressive degradation of their model to save compute, and it's not just “perceived downtrend”, Anthropic themselves have acknowledged the quality of service degradation.

xt0016d ago

At this point if you have cash or compute credits laying around in the tens of billions, better to hedge your bets than to find out the winner that took all was not you.

addaon16d ago

Unless none of the current crop of AI companies is “the winner,” either because a newcomer appears or the craze fizzles… in which case have $40B in the bank seems superior.

Oras16d ago

They just announced their new chip, and they are the ones created transformers yet investing this amount in a competitor?

I don’t know what to make of it

pupppet16d ago

I wonder if Google regrets publishing that article on transformers.

jeffbee16d ago

Urs used to talk (internally) about not publishing "industry-enabling papers" which is why most Google infrastructure papers were describing something that had already been turned off, or was already in the process of being replaced by the next system (GFS, Vitess, etc). The things that did get published were either considered not key advantages, that other companies simply cannot do, things that other companies wouldn't bother doing, or experiments that never worked at all. There were exceptions of course. But it led to a public perception of the Google stack involving mostly technologies that were long dead or were never adopted.

"Attention Is All You Need" was a very very different thing and I also wonder if they are glad they published it. But I imagine if they hadn't, the motivation for researchers to leave Google would have been even larger.

cameronbrown15d ago

> I also wonder if they are glad they published it

https://youtu.be/ue9MWfvMylE

Jeff Dean is asked this question by Geoffrey Hinton at 37:35 - might worth watching. Overall an interesting video.

1 more reply

sumedh16d ago

So Google allowed publishing the Attention paper because they didn't understand its value.

1 more reply

northern-lights16d ago

Why do you think Google considers Anthropic a competitor?

brainwad15d ago

Google makes a competing product to Claude's main product? So competing, in fact, that they have to ban Googlers from using Claude in order to get enough dogfooders.

jeffbee16d ago

It makes every bit as much sense as investing in Snap while still operating their own social network product. Seems to have worked out fine (for Google, not Snap).

dzhiurgis16d ago

FWIW I’d buy SNAP now that they are at rock bottom

spwa416d ago

Given that anthropic is probably paying it all back to them in compute bills, they may not be giving them anything.

wirgil116d ago

hedge your bets, I know I would

namegulf16d ago

So $40B in google cloud credits in return for % in equity.

Didn't Amazon AWS do the same recently?

ChrisArchitect16d ago

Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47848276

neofrommatrix16d ago

Layoffs next month to make up for this? /s

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

24 comments

ZeroGravitas16d ago

Does this mean Google is a proscribed terrorist organisation or whatever the legal designation is and can no longer work with the US government?

layer816d ago

No. Google can’t make use of Anthropic within the scope of their own government contracts. That doesn’t mean they can’t invest in Anthropic otherwise.

tomrod16d ago

Does the EO actually hold any weight to that designation, or is that decided by the US Congress?

infecto16d ago

Was there ever anything more than a tweet from the secretary of defense? That holds no weight.

layer816d ago

Yes, they’ve been formally designated: https://www.anthropic.com/news/where-stand-department-war

infecto16d ago

Ahh yes I forgot on that. Still seemed like not much of any impact, blowing smoke.

spindump893016d ago

Hopefully this money means more compute infrastructure to help Anthropic counter the efficiency changes that have created this perceived downtrend in claude quality.

palmotea16d ago

The puzzling thing is why Google would try to help with that. Aren't they competitors? Wouldn't they want their competitor to have problems?

It's more understanding for Amazon or Microsoft to make such an investment, because they're not as competitive in the model space.

bmurphy197616d ago

There's always three:

   Google buys Anthropic.
   Microsoft buys Open AI (or vice versa depending on how things go).
   SpaceGrok buys Cursor, limps along in 3rd place.
   Meta is the last man standing, get's stuck with Oracle, dies.

And then hopefully some open source models save us from this nightmare before China commadatises everything.

Edit: I forgot Amazon. Who knows what they will do. They're the wildcard anyway.

_puk16d ago

OpenAI buying Microsoft.. I honestly think I'd like to see that.

Anything to invigorate the desktop.

Microsoft buying OpenAI.. 10 minutes later it's rebranded Copilot.. and.. nothing much changes in the world. Oh, except all the AI improvements are around Enterprise governance.

TranquilMarmot15d ago

I hate how plausible this is

mchusma16d ago

Google owned 14ish percent of Anthropic before this investment, so presumably this could bring it up to as much as 25%?

michelb16d ago

Deepmind is heavily using Claude. This could help secure computing power.

tomrod16d ago

I'm not up to date, I think. How so?

1 more reply

morelikeborelax16d ago

What if Google can't compete? They don't want to be left behind and all this money being throw around is just nonsense anyway.

infecto16d ago

Google was already an investor in Anthropic but I don’t think they are truly competitors in this space.

littlestymaar16d ago

> the efficiency changes that have created this perceived downtrend in claude quality”

xt0016d ago

At this point if you have cash or compute credits laying around in the tens of billions, better to hedge your bets than to find out the winner that took all was not you.

addaon16d ago

Unless none of the current crop of AI companies is “the winner,” either because a newcomer appears or the craze fizzles… in which case have $40B in the bank seems superior.

Oras16d ago

They just announced their new chip, and they are the ones created transformers yet investing this amount in a competitor?

I don’t know what to make of it

pupppet16d ago

I wonder if Google regrets publishing that article on transformers.

jeffbee16d ago

cameronbrown15d ago

> I also wonder if they are glad they published it

https://youtu.be/ue9MWfvMylE

Jeff Dean is asked this question by Geoffrey Hinton at 37:35 - might worth watching. Overall an interesting video.

1 more reply

sumedh16d ago

So Google allowed publishing the Attention paper because they didn't understand its value.

1 more reply

northern-lights16d ago

Why do you think Google considers Anthropic a competitor?

brainwad15d ago

Google makes a competing product to Claude's main product? So competing, in fact, that they have to ban Googlers from using Claude in order to get enough dogfooders.

jeffbee16d ago

It makes every bit as much sense as investing in Snap while still operating their own social network product. Seems to have worked out fine (for Google, not Snap).

dzhiurgis16d ago

FWIW I’d buy SNAP now that they are at rock bottom

spwa416d ago

Given that anthropic is probably paying it all back to them in compute bills, they may not be giving them anything.

wirgil116d ago

hedge your bets, I know I would

namegulf16d ago

So $40B in google cloud credits in return for % in equity.

Didn't Amazon AWS do the same recently?

ChrisArchitect16d ago

Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47848276

neofrommatrix16d ago

Layoffs next month to make up for this? /s

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse